溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
What Am I — Flesh, Breath, and Mind, and What Else?
Of the flesh, the breath, and the reason that make me — which is the ruling seat, and what do I take to be my self?
Whatever this that I am, it is a little flesh, a little breath, and the ruling reason.
Aurelius' breakdown — I am flesh, breath, and reason — sits within the lineage of what to take the human to be. The Stoics made reason (the hegemonikon) the true seat of the human, set to govern the body. Plato divided the soul in three, with reason to rule, and this hierarchy formed a long Western current defining the human as a rational being. But modernity brought a reversal. Hume said reason is the slave of the passions, and Nietzsche and Freud held that the body's drives and the unconscious beneath reason move us more deeply. Is it reason that guides me, or body and impulse? The lineage split.
The more an age reveals how impulse and algorithm move us, the more this question — where is the seat that guides me? — asks after the possibility of governing oneself.
The emperor breaks himself into three: a little flesh, a little breath, and the ruling reason.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
The emperor breaks himself into three: a little flesh, a little breath, and the ruling reason. The flesh sickens and the breath will one day stop, yet he takes the ruling reason as his true seat. Flesh and breath are to be returned to nature; reason alone is his own. I read this question as asking what I identify myself with. Do I take myself to be only this body, or something that guides the body? All of it is finite in the end, yet where is the seat that governs me now? I stand before this question too.
✍️Your Answer
The lineage of the ancients ends here. Now it is your turn before the question. There is no right answer — only how you, today, would answer.
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